Furnace Installation & Replacement in Superior

Sagamore was lost entirely in the fire and most of Original Town went with it, 393 homes in all. Boulder County reported that roughly 70% of nearly 200 rebuild permits in town were designed to the 2021 IECC or higher, and Xcel offered incentives to owners rebuilding more efficiently. A tight new home has a small heating load, so if you're adding or replacing a furnace in a rebuild, it should be sized by Manual J, and the smallest modulating furnace may still be more than the house needs. In many rebuilds, a heat pump with modest backup is the better fit.

The town builds on the 2018 IRC, IMC and IFGC with the 2021 IECC and its own amendments, and one of those amendments says a furnace's combustion air must be supplied within a mechanical room. In practice, that favors sealed-combustion furnaces, which pipe in outdoor air, or a properly enclosed room with dedicated combustion air openings. If your furnace sits in an open basement, we'll explain how the replacement meets the rule before the inspection.

At 5,522 feet, a gas furnace delivers about 78% of its sea-level input after high-altitude conversion with the correct orifices and gas pressure. Since January 1, 2026, Colorado requires new gas furnaces to meet 14 ng/J NOx or the current ENERGY STAR version. For a Rock Creek home on a metal B-vent, that means choosing between an ultra-low NOx 80% furnace that keeps the vent and a 97% condensing furnace vented in PVC. A condensing furnace is sealed-combustion, which also satisfies the town's combustion-air requirement neatly. Our NOx guide has more.

Xcel Energy supplies natural gas here; it restored service to about 10,000 Superior and Louisville customers after the fire. If Xcel is also your electric utility, a heat pump can qualify for Xcel rebates on top of Colorado's $1,000 air-source credit and Power Ahead Colorado's $1,500 cold-climate rebate. Boulder County's Switch Together program has also offered group pricing on heat pumps. A dual-fuel system is a common middle path for Rock Creek homes. The Town of Superior Building Department issues the permit; we pull it and schedule inspection.